Comment by justin66 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by justin66 | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

> hence why RBR's win last year is considered to be a fluke, and likely a form of cheating if some are to believed: I don't know the full details just the clips

Considered by whom? I follow the sport and I don't have any idea what you're talking about. The last real instance of a serious rule infraction (let's ignore the Racing Point "pink Mercedes" nonsense) involved the 2019 Ferrari power unit, which started out stronger than everyone else but mysteriously lost some power after the FIA scrutinized it and issued updated guidance regarding fuel flow regulations (and settled with Ferrari on the matter secretly).

The only thing about last year that was a "fluke" was the way the final race was officiated.

> I don't doubt the prowess of either when it comes to designing cars or bikes, that much is clear and the work speaks for itself; where I fail to give them praise is in understanding that they simply cannot put themselves outside of the engineering domain and realize that the total package of how a chassis is developed must be tailored to suit the pilot if it is to win consistently.

Red Bull seem to have done this particularly well with this year's car. After Ricciardo left, they suffered years of Max being trailed distantly by his teammate, but Perez is a legitimate championship contender this year (whether Red Bull management truly want that or not). More to the point, the car is not only faster but a lot more drivable than that of their main rival, Mercedes. When it comes to tailoring a car to its pilots, what more could you want?

For those unfamiliar, the rumor is that Ferrari was somehow detecting the sample rate of the fuel flow sensor (which is a black-box provided by FIA and standard across all the cars), and increasing the flow rate only when the sensor "wasn't looking".

So doing a side-channel attack on the sensor, and designing a pump system to dynamically adjust the rate dozens of times a second. Hacking at its finest

I dont think RBR cheated, but i do think the FIA messed up and removed all sporting competition in order to get a Netflix finale in the can.

Changing the rules on the last few laps of the final race is.... questionable....

The wording of the rules meant they could basically get away with it, the issue is that they ignored the precedent that informally constituted the rule/s.

> The only thing about last year that was a "fluke" was the way the final race was officiated.

This. It was the way that it was won that made it questionable, Perez was clearly holding HAM up and the Team were telling him to do that in order for Max to win [0] which are just team orders in the end.

0: https://www.formula1.com/en/latest/video.2021-abu-dhabi-gran...

Yeah, team orders are fairly lame, but it is common enough in modern F1, and as long as it's not egregious enough to result in a blue flag, nobody really cares anymore. I'm a Valtteri Bottas fan from way back and I can assure you that it's not behavior that is unique to Red Bull.

I would have thought the way the race director restarted the race after Latifi's spin a few laps before the end, in a way that predetermined the race outcome, was what you were referring to. There was always going to be someone pissed off about that situation, although Masi went pretty far in a strange direction and managed to piss off the maximum amount of people. If he'd red flagged it immediately, that would have given a free set of new tires to everyone and blatantly handed the race to Hamilton instead of Verstappen.

> Yeah, team orders are fairly lame

And were illegal not too long ago, remember the Fernando is faster than you[0] scandal? Yeah, that was about the time I think I just couldn't be bothered with F1 anymore and just watched WRC instead. Honestly, F1 has always been a huge advertisement, but things like this is what makes it a mockery.

MotoGP also has team orders but the racing really is way better; I used to dislike it, but the racing has been so close and it's just a uch better spectacle without all the nonsensical pretense and pageantry that F1 has become bloated with.

0: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EvJ6Ri7yXH4

Multi 21!

I actually appreciate that team orders are no longer illegal in F1. When it was illegal the teams did it anyway, but in a way that was like cheating at blackjack or something. At least everyone understands what's happening now, and there is less hypocrisy.

I appreciate Indycar as an alternative to F1, but I recognize that they're about as bad at publicity as they can possibly be.

Team orders are to be expected. You can't expect a team to pour millions of dollars into competing, and then not to maximize their chance of winning both titles, the indivual and the constructor title.

It's similar to cycling, every cycling team in the tour the france has a captain, the role of every cyclist in the team is to ensure the captain wins the tour. If every cyclist starts to compete just for themselves, teams would have very little chance of winning the tour.

The only fair and by the rules way to end the race was to either red flag it or end under the safety car. F1 became as fake as pro wrestling that day.

> F1 became as fake as pro wrestling that day.

hahah, oh my. Never change, HN.

That and the last lap ruling race director to allow some cars to unlap themselves and not others, which is something that never happens. Either all cars unlap themselves or no one does. The upshot was Red Bull was put into a position to win by the Race Director after not being able to match Hamilton’s pace all day.

I take nothing away from Adrian Newey, he designs fast well balanced cars; nor do I take anything away from Max Verstappen, he is a phenomenal driver, it was just a poor decision by the F1 race director.

I think Newey didn’t have the engine to match his aero designs for the Mercedes dominated years. Mercedes won on having the best engine and a chassis designed to maximize that advantage and no team really had an answer to that until their engine tech caught up a bit.

last lap ruling race director to allow some cars to unlap themselves and not others

Micheal Masi absolutely annihilated any chance of an Aussie V8 Supercars racing director from ever getting that job again. He split the hair just right to make for a thrilling end to an otherwise boring race, but at the tyrannical expense of pissing everybody off and killing his reputation stone dead.

As a fan, what Perez did was one of the greatest driving feats I've ever seen and a perfect example of why F1 is a team sport- nothing wrong with that, it would be a travesty if this type of action was removed from racing.

The chaos that happened after Latifi's crash is what needs reform.

Indeed. Safety cars are the problem. It introduces chaos into pit strategies, and allows cars to close up gaps.

I grew up watching F1 in the 80s, and I don't recall EVER seeing a safety car. They either red-flagged the race and had a restart, Or they had sector based cautions.

I'd like to see a return to that style of race management. For added safety, the could using the same technology used to control DRS to enforce a speed-limiter in yellow sectors.

There were no safety cars back then. If you look for races of the 80s on YouTube you can see cars parked all over the place and becoming part of the track (especially at Monaco.)

If you look for races in the 70s and early 80s you can see photographers on the grass at the inside of the curves.

And the invasions at Monza when the cars were going back to the pits after the end of the race. This is one of the last ones

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bkFcSECEQA0

> what Perez did was one of the greatest driving feats I've ever seen

Yeesh.

I should have probably noted I’ve only been a fan of F1 (watching every qualifying, race, reading books and listening to podcasts) for the past 3 seasons so my sample size is small

There's Nothing wrong with what they did with Perez.

Mercedes should've had Bottas further up if they wanted to counter.

> Mercedes should've had Bottas further up

The only way that he would have been infront of them on the track was if he was being lapped.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com